


Smothered

by Helholden



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Love Confessions, Romantic Angst, Sad with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 15:06:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1351837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helholden/pseuds/Helholden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had his heart, but she broke it every time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sebastian

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all like this one. Feedback is always welcome, and loved! ❤

* * *

 

As he walked the candlelit hallways that night, Sebastian turned his head to look at one of the doorways off to his left. He paused in the middle of his walk to see the flames play across the door, casting shadows to dance over the oak. It was a very familiar door to him. He knew it well. It was the same pattern every night. He would begin his stroll, a daily routine to keep him busy but also alert to the comings and the goings of the castle, and cover the hallways in the fastest route possible within an hour.

 

It was a common habit, unbreakable by now. It had rooted itself so deep into his thoughts that he did it without thinking about it these days. He would walk the halls, but then he would always find himself at the end of his long stroll standing in front of this very particular door. And he never knocked. He never announced himself. He never trespassed inside.

 

He just stood there, staring at a very real and very physical boundary separating him from the one person he loved the most in this world. The one person that he could never have, and they had been all too keen on reminding him of that every second of every day of every chance they had ever gotten. It was a lesson hard-learned, and still learning, and he had always been stubborn and bull-headed in his studies.

 

Each night during his walks, Sebastian was drawn to the door of Mary’s room by a pull he could never explain with words.

 

He would stand outside of it always, a pattern that never broke, and sometimes he would lay his hand against the warm surface of the oak, close his eyes and say a silent prayer for Mary’s sake. He would then let his hand fall back to his side, turn away, and leave her in peace. He didn’t always do that, though. Sometimes the hallway had other people in it, and he couldn’t risk saying a prayer to bring suspicion upon Mary when it was all him.

 

On those nights he just walked away without a second glance.

 

For her sake, always for her sake.

 

Tonight, though, no one was around. Sebastian looked both ways to make sure. When he saw nothing but the empty darkness of flickering shadows, he glanced back at her door and touched the surface, fingers first, and then his palm grazed it slowly, reverently.

 

He went to close his eyes, but they shot open as the dull sound of glass shattering reached his ears from within her room—distant and far away—followed by her sudden shocked cry.

 

Damning all his hesitation, Sebastian grasped the handle of her door firmly and slammed his shoulder into the oak, busting it open.

 

 


	2. Mary

* * *

 

Mary stared numbly at all of the shattered glass scattered about her, showing her tousled and messy reflection back to her in a million tiny fractured faces. She was grief-stricken with dark circles under each eye, which were also red-rimmed and sore from too much crying. Her cheeks were stained with sticky tear tracks, and the corner of her lips felt crusty where her tears had dried on them. Her hair had been in a bun atop her head, for she was about to take a bath, but it was now a loose mess about her shoulders. It had come undone when she had fallen, and her fall . . .

 

. . . But the glass was everywhere, and when Mary tried to move, it cut her knee and she gasped, pulling back. Before she could process the situation herself, the door to her washroom flew open with a boom, half-scaring her, and she wrapped her arms around herself to make sure her robe covered her properly. If anything, despite her grief, she could remember her modesty.

 

Regardless of her robe, Mary felt someone drape a large towel over her shoulders before those same arms scooped her up as well and lifted her from the debris on the floor. Though she had been startled at first, she accepted the rescue. Leaning into his chest, she clutched her robe to a close under her chin and shut her eyes a brief moment as her rescuer carried her away.

 

He took her from the washroom to her bedroom, gently laying her upon her bed.

 

When Mary opened her eyes, she saw Bash’s concerned eyes above her.

 

He reached out for her, caressing her hair away from her face, and he seemed as though he was looking at her for wounds or cuts, checking her face, chin, cheeks, and neck.

 

“Are you hurt?” Bash asked, his eyes skimming her face and neck. However, his hand remained chaste, touching her hair over and over again and only her hair. He was leaning over her, but she hardly felt smothered. His attention had always been welcome. She had never shunned it before.

 

She had never shunned it until she married Francis.

 

Mary closed her eyes, and she shook her head. “No,” she answered him softly, “no, I’m fine.” She grimaced slightly when she remembered her nicked knee. She felt the sting just then beneath her robe. “Well, except my knee. I cut it.”

 

Before he could ask for permission, Bash’s hands were on her leg, gently pushing aside her bathrobe to expose her knee for his inspection. “It’s just a small cut,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”

 

He should have taken his hands away, then. It would have been the proper thing to do, but Bash’s hands lingered on her leg, his soft fingers and warm palms on her skin, touching her without moving, chaste and yet intimate all at once.

 

“Sebastian—” Mary began, but it was the wrong name to call him.

 

He withdrew suddenly. Not physically, and yet he did. First, it was as if the light shut off behind his eyes, and he slowly pulled his hands away from her leg. “My apologies,” Bash told her carefully, his voice restrained this time. Different. Mary feared he meant to add _Your Grace_. He did that sometimes. In public, or when he was hurt.

 

He still called her Mary sometimes, and she had never objected or corrected him.

 

Mary felt her eyes well up with tears again, and she tilted her head to the left. It hurt her to see him hurt when she had not meant for it to be so.

 

“Bash,” she said softly, and he looked up at her, raising his eyes with the motion of his chin.

 

They had tried. Oh, had they tried. For months and months, they had built a vast wall between them brick by brick each day, but for all of the building that went into this wall, the foundations were so fragile they shook even now with a simple straight-forward glance in each other’s direction. Mary saw in his gaze hope that had never been extinguished, nor crushed. Despite all of their formalities, their attempts at distance, her marriage and his recent betrothal, it still shone in his eyes as bright as the Northern star in the night sky to guide her home.

 

His heart still belonged to her, and there were no written words in all the world that could write that away.

 

She could believe that after all of this he would still feel this way about her, but it was undeniable in every action, in every word, in every unspoken detail. With an impulse she couldn’t explain, Mary wanted to reach out to him, but Bash spoke, breaking the silence.

 

“Mary, what happened?” he asked her, and his concern was written all over his face.

 

Mary looked away finally, finding it easier to speak. “I was trying to move the mirror,” she said, “but there was water on the floor, and I slipped. I lost my grip on the mirror. I fell, and it fell. It shattered all around me.”

 

“Is that all?” Bash added, his tone of voice drawing her gaze back to him. He was staring at her with tenderness this time, his expression softening. He leaned over her again, reaching out with his hand touch her cheek.

 

Mary closed her eyes, feeling his thumb brush at the dry tear tracks on her skin.

 

“You’ve been crying.”

 

Mary laid her hand on his wrist. “It’s nothing,” she insisted, but that wasn’t true.

 

Bash was silent at first. “If you must, lie to everyone else,” he said, “but please, don’t lie to me.”

 

She opened her eyes, staring at a spot past his shoulder. “Francis and I fought,” Mary informed him in a quiet voice, “and I might have said something cruel. He stormed off.” Her voice choked, and she swallowed past a building lump in her throat. “To be with his mistress. Instead of me.”

 

Mary had fought him in the beginning, but Francis had taken another woman to his bed, a beautiful woman and young. He was not in love with her, Mary knew, but Francis could not have been expected to stay faithful for very long. Mary had expected it of him, and perhaps that helped it to hurt less when it had happened. She bore it like faithful wife would have, and stayed true as was expected of her as well.

 

But times were hard, and growing harder for her each day.

 

Mary felt the tears hot in her eyes, spilling fresh over her cheeks. “And I am still not pregnant,” she choked out, covering her mouth with her free hand.

 

Bash’s thumb caressed her cheek, catching the tears, and he reached out to place his other hand on the opposite side of her face to hold her. There was nothing of a sexual nature in his gesture. It was kind and full of love, the way he had always been with her. Mary covered both of his hands with hers and clutched tight onto him, letting the tears come freely now.

 

“You would have never treated me such a way,” Mary suddenly said, unaware of her words until it was too late. They were already out, and she could not take them back.

 

“I told you the truth, Mary,” he simply murmured. “I will always put you first.”

 

Mary opened her eyes again, having only closed them a moment ago because of the tears. She was struck silent by his words. He had said that to her once before. It seemed like a lifetime ago when she had married Francis, but she still recalled the day as if it were yesterday.

 

She still recalled the pain in Bash’s eyes as she told him _please, don’t_.

 

“I can see that now,” Mary whispered up to him, her jaw tightening with a swell of emotion as more tears spilled from her eyes while she blinked. His face was blurry before her, the candlelight a glowing halo behind his hair. Bash loosened his hand from beneath hers, reaching it up to caress her hair.

 

“You chose my brother,” he murmured, though there was no pain or anger in his voice. “Those days are over for us now.”

 

He was saying the words, but his hands and his eyes spoke a different language.

 

Struck by a sudden impulse, Mary reached up to cup his cheek in her hand. The skin was soft but prickly from his close-shaven beard. She met his eyes, and Bash met hers.

 

“Are they?” she asked softly.

 

At her words, there was pain was in his eyes at last. Bash steeled his jaw. There was something he wasn’t telling her. It didn’t come through in his words, but it was there, rigid, beneath the surface. “It was over the night of your wedding to Francis,” he said, pulling away from her at last, and Mary felt the cold return to her.

 

“You have to believe me,” Mary said, not knowing where the words came from as she sat up on the bed. “I didn’t know he would do that, Bash. I didn’t know you would be there—”

 

Bash sat back on the bed. He drew in a deep breath, closing his eyes. The weight left his shoulders as he exhaled. “I believe you, Mary, but what’s done is done. I won’t be your second choice just because Francis makes you unhappy.”

 

It was not what Mary had expected to hear. Her jaw loosened, her lips parting in surprise. Bash had always been so open with her, so willing, and to hear such an open withdrawal was a painful cut deep down the center. She brought her hand to her heart, feeling it beat hard within her ribcage. Her eyes swelled with tears all over again, filling to the brim and spilling over when she blinked once more.

 

“I can see that now,” Mary repeated, sending a knife into her own heart, “and I am sorry, Bash, for all that I have put you through. I am so sorry.”

 

“Thank you, Mary,” he said in a soft voice.

 

“You deserve to be happy,” Mary said, two more tears falling down her cheeks. “You deserve to be happy more than me—”

 

“Don’t say that—”

 

“You are a good man, Bash,” she continued, cutting him off, “and you deserve it. I hope she is a good woman to you. I hope you marry, and I pray she brings you many children—”

 

“Mary—”

 

Mary bent forward, sobbing, and Bash caught her in his arms. He seemed afraid she was going to fall. He clutched her firmly in his embrace and placed his hand on her head to lay it against his chest. Mary sobbed against him, forgetting about the time and place and whose arms she was in, but that was not entirely true.

 

She knew whose arms they were. She knew whose hand stroked her hair.

 

“What have I done,” Mary choked out between the sobs that wracked her chest. “What have I thrown away—”

 

“Nothing, Mary,” Bash assured her, his tone of voice changing and revealing the truth all along. He placed his hand firmly on the back of her head to hold it. She wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him close as well. “I am still here, Mary,” he said. “I will always be here.”

 

“But it’s not the same,” Mary said, clutching onto the back of his shirt. She found comfort in the clutch of her fingers. “You’ll never love me as you once did, Bash, not again—”

 

“I still do,” he whispered near her ear, and he turned his head just enough to kiss the shell of her ear. Her hair covered it, but he didn’t care. “I always have.”

 

“Why?” Mary asked, staring across the room. Her fingers loosened, afraid.

 

“You are everything good in this world, Mary. You are everything to me. I told you once I will always put you first.”

 

Mary thought he might say something else, but when he did not, perhaps fearful he had revealed too much, Mary pulled back from him to look Bash in the face. There was fear in his eyes, but there was also hope. It had never gone away, even while she was married to his brother. She cupped his face in her hands. So much time had been wasted. So many mistakes had been made, but Mary would not waste any more time . . .

 

. . . and she would not make any more mistakes.

 

Mary closed her eyes and pulled him to her, kissing him sweetly on the lips. Bash reached up to hold her face, and she slipped her hand behind his head, clutching her fingers in his hair.

 

And this time, she promised, she would not let go.

 

 


End file.
